Misery for thousands of commuters at Waterloo as trains are hit by cancellations and delays

Trains in and out of Waterloo station were cancelled or delayed tonight because of emergency engineering work and signalling problems.

South West Trains services were hit at the height of the evening rush hour, on one of the hottest days of the year.

The disruption was caused by emergency engineering work outside Waterloo - after a rail buckled in the high temperatures - and signalling problems near Haslemere in Surrey.

Misery: delayed commuters at Waterloo station as trains were delayed and cancelled (picture: Alistair Dunsmuir)
The delays - on some of the country's busiest routes - caused travel chaos for thousands of passengers.

A spokeswoman for the South West Trains-Network Rail Alliance said: "We would like to apologise for the disruption our customers will face on their journeys home tonight.

"As a result of emergency engineering work to fix a track defect, we are unable to use four platforms at Waterloo which is having a serious impact on the services we can deliver. Because of that we will have to run an amended timetable for the rest of the day.

"Safety is our absolute priority. We have no choice but to make sure these repairs are carried out before we can restore train services on these lines.

"We expect to run a normal service from tomorrow morning. We would like to apologise again to our customers for this and thank them for their patience."

A Network Rail spokesman added: "As with all metals, the steel which makes up our tracks expands and contracts depending on its temperature. The hotter it gets, the more it expands and just like a road or pavement on a warm day, the metal can reach temperatures far in excess of the surrounding air temperature.

"Whilst we carry out a significant amount of work to prepare for the impact of hot weather by using hydraulic machines to artificially stretch the rails to cope with high temperatures, we have seen temperatures on our tracks of almost 50 degrees centigrade this week.

"The network in general has coped well, however the ageing condition of our infrastructure in some places means that, despite this preparation work, we have had to impose speed restrictions at certain locations to prevent damage to the track. These speed restrictions take into account changed driving conditions, similar to the limits put in place on roads across the country when conditions change."

Commuters took to Twitter to voice their anger and frustration.

One passeger, ‏@conradoldcorn, tweeted: "Never seen so many thousands of people at Waterloo station before. Pretty much every train screwed."

‏@Katrina_Jx said: "Ridiculous!! Why would you close all platforms but 3 at Waterloo in rush hour!! @SW_Trains service is getting worse!"